My posts about training have been few and far between lately, due to an injury to my left knee that has left me extremely discouraged and aggravated. I went to see a physical therapist and she said my knee cap was just not tracking right but rather slipping over to the right when it wasn't supposed to be. She gave me some exercises to help strengthen the muscles that will hopefully pull it back in track, which I have been doing and it has definitely been helping and I've been able to run but I just haven't been pushing myself too hard or sticking to my full marathon training plan. I really don't want to push myself too far and end up hurting myself worse.
Running, ironically, doesn't hurt my knee at all. The only time I feel pain is going up and down stairs, even squats don't hurt. It's by far the weirdest knee pain I've ever experienced. I just don't want to push my knee and end up hurting it from running too long of distances.
My initial goal was to complete my first full marathon late September. However I have made the difficult decision to put that goal off until next April and run the Go! St. Louis full. I do have the Vine to Wine Half Marathon early in September so I am going to focus on speed work and getting a faster half time. The race is 14 weeks away and I have found a 12 week plan (well actually I found 3 and am going to be creating one that makes sense for me). I am going to give myself these next two weeks to run at my leisure, take care of myself and just hope that my knee recovers fully in that period of time.
I am going to continue to do my exercises, twice a day and make sure to avoid activities that cause my knee to flare up, by recommendation of my physical therapist, since the paid is caused my weak muscles I just need to focus on strengthening them for the time being!
To say that this was a hard decision would be an understatement. Since beginning my serious journey in running a year ago I feel as though every time I get really serious about a plan something happens and side lines me for weeks at a time. Last year it was my foot and earlier in this training cycle my IT Band was causing issues (this has fully gone away as I have done way more stretching to help that). I know injuries are a part of the game, I know it's just my bodies way of telling me to pay attention to what I am doing and what it needs, but it's just really frustrating to not be able to do the one thing that I want to do more than anything. Running is a release for me, it's a way to just shut everything else out and be with myself for an hour or so.
If anyone has had this same issue I would love to hear your story and if you have any suggestions on exercises you think I should try out, I'm all ears!! The more recommendations the better!!
So for now my training is halted, hopefully to be picked back up fully in a couple weeks and once that happens I'll share updates and my journey through a completely different type of training plan, way more based on speed work than distance!
Once I get my plan nailed down I'll share it here for anyone who wants to jump on board with me and train *virtually* together!
Cheers!
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